Olé!

Jun 14 67 Buds

A bud knows no bounds, but to be taken by the wind, through abstention of water and nutrients it curtails its root branch and fly’s freely through the crowd of other buds, leaves and pastoral debris to denote a place for itself, a home, in the undergrowth, hoping not to be eaten by a passing animal and to flourish in new growth from the ground for which it was given. There are a great many problems to this ode to the bud in parched African plains, where tumble weed passes in the wind and there is not enough water to promote new growth. For it is in the hills and valleys of England that the plants, trees, evergreens and flowers roll on by and find new life. In the Swiss mountains, French Alps, in the rolling fields of Europe, in the pastures of Russia, in the mountains of China, the footholds of Tibet, in the tropical fields of Indonesia, the coastline of Australia, and the plantations of the Americas. The equator seems to bear the brunt of the parched lands for which it is so hard to find new salvation in plant life.

The plant grows up to be a sapling, of subordinate kind, making its way up to early adulthood, possibly surrounded by traffic on a local roundabout, among many others and greater, older plants in a substantial forest, on a hillside grazed by cattle and sheep, or just the lucky one, standing alone in those dry African plains. There is little to decipher between the original trees of a watery base to those of today, like the Banyan Tree. High top, full plumage and thick round trunk. Trees come in all forms, from evergreen to shedding their leaves in fall, from needles to round leaves, from buds to seeds scattered in the estuary from their riverside location. They bloom with the sun, CO², and clear clean water. But we are feeding them particles of pollution, acid rain and damnation of our pollutive progress in this time. In all, we are not taking care of them, but they, and the soil and ground beneath are taking care of us. How does a tree feel next to a busy road? Is it just bad luck? They are certainly robust enough to cope in their fragility, and sensitive surviving nature.

We must realise if we plant more and more trees over the coming seasons, we will be increasing the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere, which could in effect force the ocean and the land to absorb more of the carbon dioxide. We will have to push for this through our assumption that the Anthropocene can only be healed by a reversal of mans footprint on the land and to create better habitats not only for man but the becoming, extinct animal and plant species we used to know and dearly love.

There is a fox calling from outside my room. It is mating time and he is in desperate need of a partner, but to no avail. The busy road opposite through the trees and undergrowth stops other foxes entering his territory. He will have to travel to her part of the world or else keep trying to gain the survival of pro-creation to the best of his ability. There is the moon and the stars, and the magnetism of the leaves radiating out energy, but this fox is hesitant to leave his nest. Badgers turn up the soil just 500m down the pathway and their sets are being coiled by the Council to stop breeding and their turning over of local gardens, squirrels shoot up and down the trees collecting buds to eat, precariously on narrow branches. Birds fly high up into the canopy ready for morning song and then dart down to the seed bed looking for worms.

There is no emergency in nature, but in man there is. Nature will carry on evolving and changing into mites, bugs and gnats, voles, badgers and rodents, pelicans, birds and hawks, fish, salmon and whales. They will all adapt but we cannot go on polluting their land and seas for the sake of ours, and in gods name what ever made us think we could take the shortcut to dirtying our oceans. We are man, they are nature, our education on the two must be symbiotic in order to co-exist through transcendence that we pay the price now and grow to learn to love our natural habitats again. It is not, and never will be too late to save ourselves first, but it will be too late for some species if we do not act in extremism now, to nip pollution making schemes in the bud. The buds are coming out this summer, late spring to nest in the trees and plant life around us. Let us not be shy to enjoy the cycle of nature and go on replanting trees and plants that will die out or be genetically modified to survive this changing weather.